Prime minister calls on citizens to help as famine resulting from drought leads to rise in deaths in the Bay region.

Somalia's prime minister has announced the deaths of at least 110 people due to hunger and diarrhoea in the country over the past 48 hours amid a drought in the Bay region.

The announcement by Hassan Ali Khaire on Saturday followed the Somali government's warning last week that the drought amounts to a national disaster.

"It is a difficult situation for the pastoralists and their livestock. Some people have been hit by famine and diarrhoea at the same time. In the last 48 hours 110 people died due to famine and diarrhoea in Bay region," Khaire's office said in a statement.

About 363,000 acutely malnourished children in Somalia "need urgent treatment and nutrition support, including 71,000 who are severely malnourished", the US Agency for International Development's Famine Early Warning Systems Network has said.

The Somali government has said the widespread hunger "makes people vulnerable to exploitation, human rights abuses and to criminal and terrorist networks".

Somalia was one of four regions singled out by the UN secretary-general last month in a $4.4bn aid appeal to avert catastrophic hunger and famine, along with northeast Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen.

In 2011, an estimated 260,000 people starved to death in Somalia.

The UN humanitarian appeal for 2017 for Somalia is $864m, to provide assistance to 3.9 million people.

But the UN World Food Program recently requested an additional $26m plan to respond to the drought.